Classic Poem

Thou art a lover too. Nay, do not start.
Love in a convent? Well, that's not so rare,
For there, sometimes, do live most constant loves.
And yet, dear Sister, do not me mistake;
I no confession seek; I am no priest;
And could not shrive thee even hadst thou need.
Yet would I make confession unto thee,
For thou hast power to help me beyond words
Or recompense. Thy heart is willing too;
I read it in thy face.


Come then with me,
Too long have I inflamed thy wonder now.
Well dost thou know the fountain of my grief,
But 'tis a new and strange solemnity
Unto the cause of which we now are come.
This leaden casket in the rock-hewn niche
Inurns the dust of Abelard. Last eve
It was not here, but while the voiceless night
Urged down the dark the westward-going stars,
This leaden casket reached the Paraclete,
And first it is my task to tell thee how.

Let me not dwell too long upon the woes
And sorrows of my lover-friend. Enough,
That, doomed to silence, and his scriptures burned,
For just redress he would have gone to Rome,
But coming unto Clugni in the way,
Found Peter's love and hospitality,
And being weak and spent, could go no more;
So gave his days to holy offices,
To frequent prayers, to fastings self-imposed;
Meanwhile disclosing to his saintly host
That flame of love divine he bore to me,
The intolerance that kept our lives apart,
Defying our unconquerable love;
Told how the fret of our impulsive youth,
By powers repressive goaded, plucked the fruit
Of our desire, and, when 'twas known, the Church,
By secret bans, its reputation purged
Of all the taint our private sins had wrought. . . .

Alas, I tax thy strength. Courage, dear heart,
On this green, mossy bank rest for awhile,
And I'll be brief. . . . . I was about to tell
How he disclosed to Peter all our fate,
Told of our child who died so long ago,
My child and Abelard's, and ere he closed
The tale of agony, he charged his friend
To lay his dust within the Paraclete,
That so he might be near the one beloved
For whom in life his hungry heart had yearned
To all of which the saintly man gave ear.

So when the last, faint, flickering wave of life
Had vanished from the pulse of Abelard,
And he was buried in the silent vault
At Clugni—now I speak for thee alone—
When darkness hid the deed from scandal's eye,
Peter exhumed the casket and its guest,
And brought them under cover of the night
To me, deeming such wondrous love as ours
More sacred than the law; resolving, too,
That we who were so cruelly apart
In life, in death should be as one. So there,
In that grim vault, by flickering candle-light,
I did receive them—mark our footprints here—
The saint belovèd and the lover-saint.
I stood obscure amid the recent gloom,
Taper in hand to mitigate the night,
My heart to firm repression schooled, the while
The priest of Clugni read the words of life,
Making them eloquent with many sobs,
And adding unto weeping, prayers that we,
The quick and dead, might be no more apart,
But one, body and spirit, evermore.
And now I charge thee by that living love
That burneth ever as a sacred fire
Upon the altar of thy faithful heart,
Be thou untimid in my love's stern task;
Or if thou be not moved by my poor words,
Then let thy pity hear the torrent surge
Of that resistlessly appealing flood
That poured in fiery phrase, intense as flame,
From lips of Abelard.


My prayer is this:
When I am dead and all those cruel ones
Who kept me all my life out of my heaven
Are fed with empty phrase, come, O my Friend,
Bring those unto this place who know the art
To obey thy word,—thou shalt be abbess then—
Give thy command to ope these leaden walls
And lay my form with that of him I love.
There let our hungry dust, so long apart,
Be one forever as our spirits are.
Such is my prayer to thee.


And to the rest,
That they shall hold the name of Hélöise
In honour of the love of Abelard.